The present invention relates generally to a kitchen appliance, and more particularly to an exhauster capable of removing the cooking fume from a kitchen.
As shown in FIGS. 1 and 2, a conventional kitchen smoke exhauster 10 of the prior art comprises mainly a housing 11, an air flow chamber 12, two motors 13, two lobed wheels 14, two grease traps 15, and a bottom plate 16. When the kitchen smoke exhauster 10 is turned on, the lobed wheels 14 are driven by the motors 13 to produce a current of air to draw the cooking fume into the air flow chamber 12. The grease steam carried in the cooking fume is subsequently directed by a centrifugal force to move along the direction tangential to the lobe surfaces of the lobed wheels 14, so as to reach an inner wall 121 of the air flow chamber 12, from which the grease steam is further guided to flow downwards to arrive at a bottom wall 122 of the air flow chamber 12, as indicated by an arrow 17 in FIG. 2. The captured grease is finally collected and held in a grease reservoir (not shown in the drawings) via an exit port 152 of a grease channel 151 of the grease trap 15.
The kitchen smoke exhauster 10 of the prior art described above is a time-honored kitchen appliance; nevertheless it has the following defects that need to be addressed and improved:
(a) The efficiency of removing the grease steam carried in the cooking fume is generally unsatisfactory, in view of the facts that the sticky grease has in itself a poor mobility and that the grease steam is carried through a long path before it is finally collected and held in the reservoir. In addition, it is often difficult to clean up the grease that has deposited and accumulated on the bottom wall 122 of the air flow chamber 12.
(b) The crumbled grease crusts are likely to be blown out of the air flow chamber 12 via a smoke entrance 161 of the bottom plate 16 in a direction indicated by a dotted arrow 18 in FIG. 2, thereby resulting in contamination of the food that is being cooked on a cook top located under the kitchen smoke exhauster 10.
(c) The top edge of the air flow chamber 12 meets vertically the underside of the upper plate of the kitchen smoke exhauster 10 to form a junction A as shown in FIG. 2. Such junction is often a culprit responsible for a poor ventilation at such time when the kitchen smoke exhauster 10 is in operation.